Huntress-class Ambush Corvette
"I stand atop a ship named persistence, beneath sails made of resolve." ''- Motto of the independent corvette 'Guinevere' The '''Huntress-class Ambush Corvette' is an experimental class of warship introduced by the Keeper's Dance Fleet Yards in the aftermath and end of the devastating Frontier War in 0300 PCU. KDFY intended to introduce the Huntress-class as a new line of advanced warships for the Centrum Assembly but was eventually abandoned as a result of resources needed to build ships being redirected to the supplement of the Avalon Exploratory Initiative and the construction of the massive Edric's Gate. Specifications *'Length:' 98 Meters *'Wingspan:' 28.05 Meters *'Depth:' 10.7 Meters *'Number Of Decks: '''2 Decks (With a small subdeck) *'Crew:' 8 personnel (Can be operated by 1 person with limited effectiveness) *'Propulsion:' Drift-Accelerated Fusion Thermal Rocket. 'Drift Drive', 8x Articulated High-Energy Vector Thrusters *'Role:' Fast Attack Corvette, Reconnaissance Vessel Armaments * '''Prow-mounted Broadhead-Lock Retractable Coilgun – '''capable of firing molybdenum-Alloy projectiles to terrifying speeds, crucial to the ambush tactics that the corvette was designed for, capable of firing armour piercing for hull shredding canister rounds. The weapon can also be double shotted by loading 2 rounds and charging both primary and backup capacitor to increase fire power, this however would result in an inaccurate shot and risk the weapon suffering a catastrophic failure. * '''4x laterally articulated Autoguns –' fixed to the vessel’s wingtips, each of which is loaded with advance ranging lasers and rapid action targeting suites, serving as point defence, they are tasked to shield the corvette from missiles and serve a secondary role as ship to ship weapons in close combat, suitable to dispatch strike craft the autoguns are also capable of inflicting moderate damage to light warships. * 2x Pressurised Torpedo Silos – '''capable of firing many variations from its rapid cycling pressurised launch slits from Aspect-seeking, Dumb-fire cluster rockets to Swarm and Flechette Warheads designed to split into heated shrapnel devastating crews and subsystems. Utilities * '''Laser Rangefinders – A laser rangefinder is a rangefinder that uses a laser beam to determine the distance to an object. The most common form of laser rangefinder operates on the time of flight principle by sending a laser pulse in a narrow beam towards the object and measuring the time taken by the pulse to be reflected off the target and returned to the sender. Due to the high speed of light, this technique is not appropriate for high precision sub-millimeter measurements, where triangulation and other techniques are often used. * '''Imaging LIDAR – '''surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor. Differences in laser return times and wavelengths can then be used to make digital 3-D representations of the target. The name lidar, now used as an acronym of light detection and ranging (sometimes light imaging, detection, and ranging), was originally a portmanteau of light and radar. Lidar sometimes is called 3D laser scanning, a special combination of a 3D scanning and laser scanning. It has terrestrial, airborne, and mobile applications. Lidar is commonly used to make high-resolution maps, with applications in geodesy, geomatics, archaeology, geography, geology, geomorphology, seismology, forestry, atmospheric physics, laser guidance, airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM), and laser altimetry. * '''Probe Deployment System– '''fired from the torpedo tubes these systems allow the ship to deploy drones to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions where it’s profile would be detected. * '''Passive EM Telescope– '''Passive sensors are patterned after radio astronomy instruments, which detect emissions having very low power. They are particularly sensitive to accumulated radiation from a multitude of emitters on the ground, both from within the frequency band in which measurements are being made, and from out-of-band. Spaceborne passive sensors provide the ability to obtain all-weather, day and night, global observations of the Earth and its atmosphere. These spaceborne passive sensors operate in frequency bands. * Rapid-Action Autoloading System, LightCOM Transtellar Communication System, ECM Suite, Sophisticated Astronavigation Bay, Sizeable Cargo Bay, 8x VLS Escape Pods. Auxiliary Craft * 1x Deployable R-36 Wildcat All-Terrain Excursion Rover History The Huntress-class was introduced in the aftermath of the devastating 10-year conflict known as the Frontier War by Keeper's Dance Fleet Yards. In 0302 PCU, nearly all remaining natural resources and manpower were diverted to the construction of a massive Drift Gate known as Edric's Gate, which was named after astronomer Doctor Sadavar Edric after his discovery of a resource-rich nebula designated CDC-41 Gamma. This left a brief period of 2 years between the end of the war and the beginning of the Edric's Gate program, it was in this short period of grace that the engineers and scientists of Keeper's Dance Fleet Yards attempted to introduce a new line of modern warships into the ranks of the largely outdated vessels of the Centrum Assembly Defence Forces. Even this project was canceled by KDFY after the beginning of construction on Edric's Gate, there was one design that made it all the way through the design phases and spawned one functioning prototype, known as the CSV Huntress. The design of the Huntress-class was inspired by the Outrider-class vessels used by the Frontier Union throughout the course of the war, it intended to fill the role of a fast attack vessel that the CADF's large and heavily armed ships lacked. The CSV Huntress was also the site of many companies testing new technologies aboard the ship and became the most expensive ship ever constructed in the Tantalus Cluster.